Exclusive Clip: ‘Aquabats’ Origins, Part 4

We’ve reached the penultimate installment of our special five-part series of The Aquabats! Super Show! season 2 episodic sneak-peeks! Each of the first five episodes of the new season premiering weekly on Hub Network include on Bat’s recollection of how the rock-n-rolling, world-traveling superhero team came to be—each told in a different style of animation. You can learn more about the project by reading our first installment featuring additional info from show creator, exec producer and star Christian Jacobs (a.k.a. MC Bat Commander) here.

This week’s episode is called “Summer Camp!” The new adventure will see the Aquabats making an appearance at the AquaCadet Summer Camp, run by Camp Counselor Jewel. When cadets start going missing in the night, the Bats must face a mysterious Were-Ape! Yo Gabba Gabba!‘s Leslie Hall guest stars.

The episode will feature the Bats’ origin story as told by the Bat Commander (Jacobs). He weaves an epic tale of the Aquabats’ remote island home and the terrible disaster which caused them to flee, only to be taken in by the magnanimous Professor who nursed them back to health and turned them into superheroes. The anime-inspired digital 2D animation was delivered by Ian Johnston at Utah’s Too Many Legs studio, who also created the clip from episode #201 “The Return of the Aquabats!”.

“For Bat Commander’s we went back to the style of the main cartoons from last season. We had our friend Pey [Eriko Uruma, who designed the original cartoon versions of the Bats] do some more illustrations and character turnarounds,” Jacobs reveals. “In this one we’re telling more of a story that’s traditional Aquabats folklore, the story we’ve been telling from the beginning [of the band]: The Aquabats came from an island and had to escape—a space monster comes and takes us off the island. There are a lot of little things in there that allude to the whole Aquabats mythos.”

“We did that in the same Japanimation/American hybrid style, like most of the serialized cartoons from last season,” Jacobs continues. “I thought if we changed things super drastically there could be a little backlash from fans of the show. I really like the style we were attempting to do last season, and I love Pey’s artwork–I wanted to bring that back, so I thought it’d be appropriate for that to be Bat Commander’s cartoon. If you kind of know the origin story of the band, that’s kind of the story we’re telling in that one.”